 |
 |
| Pictures of Antarctica |
Harpooning the Whale - Whales and Whaling pictures 55
|
|
|
|
|
With a steam (later diesel) powered whale catcher boat, coming up behind the whale was a much easier task than previously, but still not so straightforward as might be assumed. The whale might dive for many minutes at a time and surface any where about, the engine speeding up to reach the whale would alert it and it may dive again, the process could and did often continue for many hours like this with no guarantee of being able to catch that particular whale. But ultimately of course the odds were stacked greatly in the whalers favour and the whale was in the gunners sights and the harpoon released. The conditions shown here are close to ideal for the gunner with a virtually flat sea so neither the boat nor whale were rising and falling with the waves and little or no wind to make the sea surface choppy. Despite the apparently huge target, it was not so easy to harpoon a baleen whale efficiently so as to ensure a rapid kill. The harpoon needed to hit the whale just behind the last rib so that it would go forwards into the body cavity and explode amongst the vital organs. Too far forwards and it would hit a rib so causing it to explode on the surface of the whale, not an immediately fatal or debilitating blow and more crucially, not anchoring the whale with the harpoons flukes. Too far backwards and there was the possibility that the harpoon would shoot straight through the muscle mass leading to the tail and come out the other side, so attaching the whale boat to an agonized, but now enraged and barely debilitated whale. If the harpoon struck too far forwards and hit the skull, it would simply bounce off. Very few whales were killed first time, over decades of whaling, the average number of harpoons it took to kill a baleen whale was 2.8. There was danger for the whalers crew at this time too. Huge amounts of strong thick rope would play out as the whale sped off. Sometimes despite the enormous strength of the rope it snapped, the sudden release of many tons of force on a rope maybe 6 inches in diameter caused it to slash backwards to the boat. If an unfortunate crew member was caught by this rope it could easily smash bone and flesh to a pulp. Sometimes the whale would not swim off forwards, but would dive and go sideways or backwards, the rope could get caught around the propeller or be fouled in some other way causing the rope to need to be cut. The only relatively safe way of cutting a rope under huge strain was to turn the boat so that the rope was turned partly around a bollard. Then a crew member - usually the gunner as he would be captain and had ultimate responsibility for the catcher boat - would cut the rope. This was accomplished by standing on the bollard and hitting the rope with as hard a blow as possible with the largest and sharpest axe available. All other crew were well out of the way of the flailing rope and the man who cut the rope was at the eye of the "storm".
|
Previous
